Quite some time ago I read that the human brain is a storehouse of information throughout our lives. Everything we have seen, heard or read is filed away in our miraculous brain.

In fact, our brains store so much data that like any other overstuffed filing system it’s not always easy to retrieve information we know we have, but can’t seem to get to it. You know all those times you had something right on the tip of your tongue, but just couldn’t get it out? That’s your overstuffed filing system of the brain.

That would explain why I did so poorly in American history and math tests when I was a teenager. So many times I knew I knew the answers to certain questions, but I could not for the life of me come up with them. Long after the tests were turned in and a “D” was gracing the top of the page, those lost answers would come to me.

I guess you could blame it on a faulty filing system. Apparently those things I considered priorities, things like the birthdays of each of the Beatles, were right in the front of my mental filing cabinet because not only could I tell you when John, Paul, George and Ringo were born I could also tell you all their vital statistics, the title of every song they ever did and the year they were released.

However, what the Dread-Scott Decision was all about or when the Missouri Compromise took place were no doubt misfiled way back in the mental cabinet and were not found until those little nuggets of American history no longer mattered.

Now, many, many years later and a lifetime of information in storage, my mind still comes across old facts that are not important to anything in my life. The other day, for no reason at all, I remembered that Maine separated from Massachusetts and became a state in 1820.

Once in a while I will bump into an acquaintance from long ago. I may have known this person from my school days or maybe from some other venue from years gone by. And as we stand chatting one of those old files in my brain will open up and I’ll have total recall of some conversation we had 40 or 50 years ago.

Other times someone will approach me and bring up some memorable occasion from way back when. Though their file on that occasion is apparently front and center, mine is locked away and I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. Sometimes I don’t even have a clue as to who in the heck they are.

I walk away from these encounters truly baffled. Could they have me confused with someone else I wonder. Yet, they seem to know me quite well. The answer to the puzzle may come to me a day, a week or maybe even a month later and then I feel like a fool because I realize my responses to that conversation were way off the mark.

I feel like calling that person to tell them I really do know who they are and I really do remember that incident, I just couldn’t get to that particular file while we were talking. But, by then they have probably closed that memory file themselves and wouldn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

My husband I were recently talking about past Summer Olympics and some of the outstanding memorable events. We had no problem remembering the names of some of the medal winners of a long time ago, but neither of us could come up with the gold medallist in an outstanding wrestling match of just a few years ago.

A few nights later I awoke for one of my nocturnal bathroom trips and like a bolt out of the blue the name came to me. I woke my husband up and said “Roulon Gardner.” Even though Henry had been sound asleep he immediately knew what I was talking about and seemed pleased that I had recalled a name that we both knew.

Yes, the brain is an amazing filing system and the way I see it . . . wait, it’s right on the tip of my tongue, I know I know how I see it, but I just can’t come up with it right now. I’ll probably remember it tomorrow night when I get up to go to the bathroom and then I’ll give you a call.